Chris Norris

Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. He is the author of more than thirty books on aspects of philosophy, politics, literature, the history of ideas, and music.

On 18 October 2017, Wilson was detained at the Wolverhampton Home Office reporting centre where she had been reporting on a fortnightly basis since August 2015. She was put in a vehicle that reminded her of a ‘meat van’, because it had no windows, and taken to Yarl’s Wood for six days; she says this was the worst experience of her life.

She called her daughter from the detention centre and cried uncontrollably down the line. ‘I said: “Get me out of here, Natalie, please get me out of here”.’ After six days she was put in another van, and when she got out she realised she was being taken to a building next to Heathrow airport; she was told that she would be put on a plane the next day.

It was only at the last minute that she was released, given a travel warrant for train tickets and let out to make her way back to Wolverhampton. ‘The planes were taking off over my head; I had to put my hands to my ears because of the noise’, she said. - The Guardian, May 5th, 2018

The good ship Windrush brought us here,Seven decades back and more.They greeted us with many a cheer,With ‘Welcome’ flags galore.

A cloud no bigger than a man’s hand crosses the English Channel from Paris, and then, in an instant, the trees, the orchard, the hedgerows, the field of wheat, are black with locusts. When at length they rise to fly on to the next parish, the boughs are bared of all culture, the fields have been stripped of every green blade of human aspiration; and in those skeletal forms and that blackened landscape, theoretical practice announces its ‘discovery’: the mode of production. - E.P. Thompson

‘Structures don’t take to the streets!’ - graffito on wall of the Sorbonne, May 1968

OK, point taken: it's not 'on the street'You'd find them, all those 'structures' that we wentOn endlessly about till soixante-huitWhen we skulked in our academic tent(Or so the story goes). We'd failed to meetOur one great chance and challenge heaven-sentTo end the left's two-centuries-long defeatBy making good the two decades we'd spentOn theory-talk.

Small wonder should they greetUs lot, those militants, with slogans lentAn added force by dint of our eliteNormalien credentials, native bentFor high-flown chat, and tendency to treatThe world as theory's oyster. We'd frequentOnly those streets (they said) where a discreetEscape-route helped us twisters circumventOur own past calls to action. Then some neatDebating-trick did service to augmentOur cultural capital, and take the heatOff any failings that we might repentWere they not wiped clean from our record-sheetBy the fine structuralist expedientOf counting subjectivity a cheatThat's foisted on us when we representOurselves as 'free'.

Thus all our thoughts repeatThe lie that has us willingly assentTo ideology's absurd conceitWhereby the hoodwinked subject rests contentWith a fake ‘freedom’ that would have him beatIts own unyielding bounds. How orientOurselves to action if the driver's seatOf willed intent contains a subject pentBy structures that perpetually secreteThe solvent of each self-constituent.

That's the idea: that all those Althusser-Primed theorists could do, faced with the MayÉvénements, was to disown all shareOf agency, urge strikers to delayThat premature revolt, and so declareThe present conjoncture not one that theyCould possibly endorse. Then they'd compareThe current prospects with the grisly wayThings go whenever passions start to flareAnd, as so many times before, betrayThe white-hot zealots to the black despairThat comes of hopes and dreams long kept at bayBy the same powers that soon must conquer theirIll-timed charade.

Yet I'd still say,All these years on, that you'd best spareUs street-averse soixante-huitards your pay-Back accusations of our taking careTo hide ourselves behind a great arrayOf abstract propositions framed to bearWhatever weight of evidence might frayOur threadbare theory-hope. It's you who errMost grievously if you take that cliché,'No structures on the streets', as if to squareAccounts with real-world history and playThe role of less-deceived. Who more awareThan us how world-events will often strayFar wide of anything that the armchairPhilosopher might dream hors de mêléeSince structures don't emerge out of thin airBut just when subjects meet the come-what-may.

Quick recap for the faint of heart or weakOf memory: 'structure' signified the siteOf struggle, contestation, and critiqueWhere subjects found a leverage-point despiteAppearances. It seemed to show a bleakSince language-based determinism quiteDevoid of all idea that we might speak,Act, criticise, and thus relieve our plightAs drifters up the croc-infested creekOf any ideology that mightRecruit compliant minds.

That's how the cliqueOf New-Right, mostly ex-left types indictUs true soixante-huitards, we who still seekA way to get the basic issue right,The one that comes to us from Ancient GreekPhilosophy and yet remains the blightOf system-builders as of those who'd sneakFree-will back into some (it seems) airtightConstruction through a small but handy leakOf subjectivity. No inner lightFor us old structuralists, no high mystique,Like Sartre's, of a freedom shining brightWith existential promise through that freakOf nature, human choice. Hail the White KnightWho comes (though often by the most obliqueOr complex ways around) to wing our flightFrom the iron grip of causal laws that wreakDestruction on our human will to slightMere circumstance and end the losing streakWe suffered as if fate had fixed the fight.

My point: that structuralism helped us seeBeyond that Sartrean fix by letting go,Once and for all, the thought of subjects 'free'In the sense 'really, deep down, prone to noImpediments of kind or of degreeTo their free choice: 'defend the status quoOr strive against it!' That's the reason weTook language as our model, or – you knowThe story well enough – the master-keyOf structural linguistics. This we oweTo Saussure, Jakobson and company,Plus Althusser who managed to bestowOn Marx a reading that could claim to beBoth rigorous and well equipped to showOur own conjuncture with the claritySuch thinking brings. The syntagmatic flowOf speech is like the combinatoryOf actions and events, an ordered rowThat bears the mark of willing agency,Whether to hold in place or overthrowSuch order. Yet it shows unconsciously – So structuralists maintain – the sous-niveau Of differences and contrasts that decreeHow speech or actions signify althoughThe speaker, like the agent, won't agreeThat what they've said or done makes sense on soArcane a set of terms. Think: why should she,The militant, however street-wise, growConversant with depth-codes of strategy,Or speaker venture nothing till, below

The surface utterance, he too can traceThe signifying systems that eludeOur conscious grasp? For else they’d slow the paceOf speech, or thought, or action, and precludeAll access to the generative spaceWhere subjects somehow find the aptitudeFor words and acts that promise to displaceThe ideologies that once subduedAll stirrings of revolt. So we gave chaseTo errant signifiers, or pursuedThose fleeting signs – exposed to us by graceOf Marx and Freud, plus insights late accruedFrom Althusser and Lacan – that the caseIs not at all as it's naively viewedBy those who take our words and deeds at faceAcceptance but, more tellingly construed,Half-yields to ideology's embraceYet kicks against it.

Hence the multitudeOf symptoms that would promptly self-eraseAt its behest if not for us, the broodOf old-school structuralists who opt to baseOur strategies and methods on a clued-Up symptom-reader's grasp. This shuns the raceFrom thought to deed, reminds us what ensuedIn ‘68, and bids we play our aceCard to warn just how easily a moodOf premature euphoria takes the placeThat, we say, falls more aptly to a shrewdSince theory-guided project to retraceThe structural constraints that had us screwed.

Portugal’s president has described the circumstances in which a homeless Portuguese man died near the UK parliament as ‘inhumane’. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa paid tribute to the unnamed man found dead in an underpass near Westminster tube station, a stone’s throw from an entrance to the Houses of Parliament. In a statement on the official website of the president of the Portuguese republic, de Sousa said he ‘laments the death in inhumane circumstances of our fellow countryman of 35 years, who was found without life in one of the metro entries in the British capital’.

- The Guardian, 16th February, 2018

The Jesus note: not one that IPlay up but there's that lineOf his that goes'Look on me, all ye who pass by:Was ever grief like mine?'Bit lachrymose,You'll say, and on the whole I tryTo give no outward signOf inner woes,Though times there are when I could dieAnd none would grieve or pineExcepting thoseWho paused awhile to wonder whyThe tourist crowds confineTheir passing showsOf interest to Big Ben on highOr to the sty of swineOur nation knowsAs Parliament. Great place for myCampaign to take the shineOff its fake poseAs friend of every little guy,That time-dishonoured shrineTo freedom's foes.

There's lots of MPs walk my way,The Tories nose-in-airOr keen to showThey'd have me thrown in gaol todayIf it was left to theirBest judgment (knowThem by their rotten fruits, I say),And 'socialists' who'll spareSmall change then goOn endlessly about how they,The old guard, did their shareTo overthrowClass-prejudice or some clichéStamped 'vintage Tony Blair',And then – althoughAn off-note in that cabaret – Real socialists who'll dareTo halt the flowOf tourist-trade and disobeyThe bylaws with a rareAnd powerful showOf outrage fitted to convey'Blame that lot over there,Just a stone's throw'.

The Mail and Sun delight to callThem 'Corbynistas', theseNew types who seemA breed that’s worlds apart from allThe self-styled 'left' MPsWhose only dreamIs getting on, or playing ball,Or trying hard to pleaseWhatever teamOf crass time-servers have the gallTo pull their usual wheezeAnd switch mid-streamTo business-class. It's a long haulFor anyone who seesHow the regimeOf capital has us in thrall,Yet those who hold the keysLack any schemeTo buck the future or forestallA turning tide that freesThe distant gleamOf hopes renewed at every fallOf fortunes built on sleaze – The Levellers' theme!

Myself, I'll just hang on here tillThe next election (mustCome soon enough!)And then let's hope the people's willRevolts in sheer disgustAt folk who stuffTheir pockets, gourmandise their fill,And think it fair and justThat we sleep rough,Us whom the cold nights sometimes kill,Yet who retain their trust,When times are tough,That in the long death-dealing chillOf Tory rule we've sussedAn age-old bluffAnd figured how the plebs might stillFind the right ass to bust,Vow not to fluffIt yet again, but bend our skillAgainst those upper-crustClass-laws we’ll sloughOff like each parliamentary billNow set to bite the dustAt our rebuff.

That’s why the Corbynistas linkMy situation here,Begging for breadAnd living always on the brinkOf the deep freeze I fearLies just ahead,To Tory policies that syncA code-word like 'austere'With plans to shedAll care for those our masters thinkBeyond the civic sphere,Hence good as deadAlready. This new lot won't shrinkFrom setting out to clearThe Augean shedDespite the daily growing stinkOf many a privateerCaught short insteadOf mixing it with Graft Corp Inc,Advancing their career,And helping spreadThe moral rot at which we winkTill, of a sudden, we'reUnhoused, unfed.

We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy – the form of state suited to capitalism – and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. - Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis

I would say, if you like, that the party is like an out-moded mathematics. That is to say, the mathematics of Euclid. We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline. - Badiou, The Concept of Model

Without mathematics, we are blind. - Badiou, Short Treatise on Transient Ontology

First lesson: there's a truth as yet unknownIn every situation, and its placeIs marked out by some problematic zone,'Evental site', or looming crisis-spaceWhere – after all the errors that postponeDiscovery – the truth of what's-the-caseStands clear to view. For now the signs have grownQuite unmistakable and bear the traceOf bygone struggles that faint-hearts are proneTo call 'defeats' but communists embraceAs their instructive past. That way they'll honeA sharpened sense of how the long-haul raceGoes not to those who'll eagerly disownOld causes vanquished but to those who baseTheir hopes on revolutions overthrownYet yielding truths no setback can efface.

Lesson the second: lesson one appliesAcross as many disciplines as findSufficient room for truth, or recogniseHow states of knowledge always lag behindNew truth-procedures. These we must devise,Through thought and force of circumstance combined,To meet unlooked-for issues that ariseIn truth's domain, or forms of double-bindThat current thinking struggles to disguiseSince, by its nature, always pre-inclinedTo save appearances. So what compliesWith common sense wins credence of a kindWithheld from that which radically deniesThe truth, consistency or sense assignedBy expert lore to those ideas we prizeAs if by timeless intellect divined.

Third lesson: mathematics is the keyTo thinking through those issues in the spheresOf science, politics and art that weOld compartmentalisers must shift gearsTo think about at all. What links the threeIs how a grounding in set theory clearsThe way to truths which those alone can seeWho understand how each domain appearsDilemma-prone and without guaranteeOnce Cantor's infinite breaks old frontiers.This shows the mirage of consistencyTo license our discounting all that veersFrom any norm where those allowed to be – To count as subjects, citizens, or peers – Are just those who, the ruling powers decree,Can best ensure the counting-schemecoheres.

Georg Cantor, inventor of set theory

Fourth lesson: it's anomalies like thoseThat plagued set theory which gave rise to itsGreat revolutions, just as tests exposeAn unknown problem with the working fitsIn some machine, or analysts discloseHow certain logic-systems fall to bitsIf rigorously quizzed. This also goesFor sites where some state apparatus pitsIts power against the multitude yet throwsThe system into crisis when it hitsOne non-included multiple that growsIn number, size and force. This then permitsNo mere adjustment of the ratiosTo ease the deadlock or to call it quitsSince such anomalies entail who knowsWhat threat to all the state's survival-kits.

Lesson the fifth: we communists will err,And seriously so, if we should takeA vulgar-Marxist line and so declareOurselves resolved in principle to breakWith all that 'abstract', 'formal', or 'armchair'Philosophising. Such a view would makeSmall sense of my expending so much careOn laying out events in Cantor's wake,Or my erecting castles in the airAround them. All these efforts for the sake – So grumble the innumerate – of theirEnabling me to claim an active stakeIn the ongoing struggle. Yet my shareInvolves (they say) procedures so opaqueAnd technical that very few would dareTo call me out as muddle-head or fake.

Sixth lesson, just for them: if it's concreteReality you want, then nothing's more Entirely up your preferential streetThan all those numbers you'd have us ignoreAs 'merely abstract'. Fact: the balance-sheetOf every corporation shows they storeOur fates and futures like a trick-or-treatRun wild. Truth is, the further we exploreTheir complex ways, the better chance we'll meetThose horrors that left-moralists deploreWith sharp analyses of how the cheatWorks out in detail. That's just when the loreOf capital serves handily to beatOff challenges, so our best way to scoreMax points against it is to turn the heatUp mathematically: wage number-war!

Another Day Under Corporate Control, by Clay Bennett

And that's my seventh lesson: we should chooseOur ground with utmost care, make sure we playOur cards right tactically, but also useStrict thought-procedures that insist we payThe past due heed. They point to what ensuesFrom our hypothesis when, come the day,Some mounting perturbation puts the screwsOn every link that held revolt at bayUntil things took this turn. We look for cues,Us communists, in what the papers sayAbout such happenings. But – please excuseMy coming back to it – we need a wayTo link whatever piece of current newsGrabs our attention with the dossierOf past (don't call them 'failed') popular coupsWherein we read hope’s mixed communiqué.

For lesson eight's the truth that Cantor showedAnd that's borne out implicitly by allAttempts to crack the errant master-codeOf politics. It says that off-the-wallProcedures, like events, might just explodeAll bounds and show how change goes epochalBy yielding some unguessed-at episodeThat far exceeds thought's finite wherewithalOr drives its systems into overloadAt every point. Hence Cantor's Saul-to-PaulConversion on the long Damascus roadThat started out from scruples deep in thrallTo fear of all the paradoxes stowedIn the bad infinite. Yet soon they'd fallLike bread from heaven as thinking overflowedAll limits that the finite would install.

So, lesson nine: no crisis-point so tautWith future possibility as thatWhich comes unnoticed by the expert sortOf change-predictor out to bell the catOf revolution. Fending off that thoughtIs just what they're so very expert at,Like those old dix-huitards who still hold courtOn what went wrong in '68, or chatDismissively about the battles foughtTo save the Paris Commune, or – old hatTo them – have their obligatory sportWith notions of the proletariatAs vanguard class. Close kin to those, in short,For whom the Cantor great leap forward begatSuch monsters that they did their best to thwartIts spread with every queasy caveat.

Les evenements, Paris 1968

For lesson ten I leave you to reflectOn Jean Cavaillès whom the Nazis shotAs a résistant, one whose intellect – Whose work in mathematics – showed him whatIt likewise meant in ethics to selectOne's axioms and pursue them though you'd not,At first, decisive reasons to expectThey'd see you through. That fatal trouble-spotMakes him a case apart, but helps connectThe truth-procedures scientists have gotTo follow lest their errors go uncheckedWith those that once convinced the sans-culottesTo let no bourgeois allies redirectAnd skew the course of their self-scripted plot.Agreed: ten lessons drawn from Marx and Brecht,But think how Cantor cut the Gordian knot.

LONDON — A political storm is brewing ahead of Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s May 19 wedding over whether to crack down on homeless people and beggars in the well-to-do English town of Windsor . . . . Borough council leader Simon Dudley kicked off the controversy by tweeting over the Christmas holidays about the need to clean up Windsor’s streets. He then wrote to police and Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May suggesting that action be taken to reduce the presence of beggars and the homeless. Dudley referred to an ‘epidemic’ of homelessness and vagrancy in Windsor and suggested many of those begging in the town are not really homeless. He said the situation presents a beautiful town in an unfavourable light. - The Washington Post, January 4th 2018

It can be hard to find a vacant pitch.You think you've cornered one, but thenIt turns out there's some unexpected hitch,Like 'let's not see your face again',Or cops with that let's-send-them-packing itch,Or druggies looking for a den,Or doorway-minders stationed by the richLest we scare some good citizen.

It's quite a simple trade-off once you knowThe ropes. Choose an impoverished partOf town with hopes and incomes running lowAnd chances are the cops won't startThose same old scare-techniques from the word goBecause that's not where all the smartSet live or those who have the clout and doughTo silence any bleeding heart.

But then of course folk won't have much to spareIn poor parts, so we chase the doshAnd tend to wind up in those places whereThe local council's run by posh-End bureaucrats who seem to think that theirFine precincts will soon be awashWith us lot if they show a moment's careFor all that human-kindness bosh.

Myself, I did quite nicely for a whileIn Windsor, locals rich enoughTo spare at least some fraction of their pile,And others doing all the tourist stuff,Which meant they'd sometimes go the extra mile,When they saw I'd been sleeping rough,And give as if to say: let our life-styleRub off on you though times are tough.

So not a bad pitch, Windsor, all in all,Until this jobsworth got the wordThat he, as Council Chairman, must play ballAnd make sure us lot were transferredElsewhere, us human flotsam, with as smallUpset as could be lest we stirredAn impulse of regret that might just gallThe conscience of the royalist herd.

The reason? Some dim-witted legateeOf a half-dozen clans far-goneIn the descent to inbred idiocyOf Europe's royals had got it onAt last with some royal-fancier, so weFolk in the lowest echelonMust up sticks so that Windsor has its spreeAnd we don't spoil the denouement.

The lesson? If you want a country fitFor Tory toffs, for all those RoyalFlunkies and floozies, and the tabloid shitPut out to keep the commoners loyal,Then, fellow-subjects, just get used to it:We'll always be around to foilYour best-laid civic plans and do our bitTo see what fake dreams we can spoil.

For here's my point, beyond just being pissedOff with the whole Royal-wedding binge,Or at not being on the invite list:That it's the same habitual cringeThat bends the knee of every monarchist,That frees that Chairman from a twingeOf conscience, and that tells us: don't resistOr push your anti-royalist whinge.

For you'll not clear us losers from your streetsUntil you clear them from your dreams,Those royals, as well as from the gossip-sheetsThat feed your fantasy with streamsOf reportage where your worst life-defeats,Like mine, look less important themesThan the crowd of adoring fools that greetsThe couple with their PR teams.

Think harder and you'll maybe come to hateThe system that keeps them in place,Those useless idlers, while it views our stateOf penury as no disgraceBut ours alone, or else as just what fateDecreed for us so that we faceUp to it, like Prince Harry and his mate,Secure in destiny's embrace.

See through that crap and you'll be on the wayTo seeing how it works, how we'reKept down, kept quiet, kept under, kept at bay,Or just kept moving on by mereCompliance with the roles they'd have us play,Those harkers-back to yesteryearWho seize their chance, with each Royal-wedding day,To re-infantilise the public sphere.

It sounds counter-intuitive. How can the ‘Jewish State’ or the Zionist movement be anti-Semitic? But several of US President Donald Trump’s appointments have made it clearer than ever. He leads the most pro-Israel US administration in history, even while appointing key figures with anti-Semitic ties as his most important advisers.

- Asa Winstanley, Memo: Middle-East Monitor

The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devalue words and reasons . . . . How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew [cf. Palestinian] appear to him . . . . If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse.

But some will object: what if he is like that only with regard to the Jews [cf. Palestinians]? What if he otherwise conducts himself with good sense? I reply that that is impossible . . . . A man who finds it entirely natural to denounce other men cannot have our conception of humanity; he does not see even those whom he aids in the same light as we do. His generosity, his kindness, are not like our kindness, our generosity. You cannot confine passion to one sphere.

- Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Anti-Semite and Jew’

(Note: ‘Bibi’ is the nickname, affectionate or otherwise, of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel.)

My parents spoke of IsraelAs of a Promised Land,A place on which our dreams might dwell,Though not (we'd understand)A dwelling-place since its far spellCould not be known first-handAnd some folk there had been through hellEn route for Haifa’s strand.

Still it remained my soul's ideal, My youthful hope and dream, That magic place-name that would steal Upon me as the theme Of reverie, though a country real Enough for it to seem, In bad times, the one name to heal My wounded self-esteem.

For that, to me, was what it meant, Aside from all the fuss (As then I thought) about those sent Away to clear for us, Or ours, more Lebensraum that lent A God-sent chance to bus Or fly folk in and circumvent Land-claims we'd not discuss.

But then the doubts began to crowd Back in and wake a sense Of what injustices allowed My joy at their expense, Those Palestinians, once a proud And free-born people; whence Their courage to endure unbowed In rightful self-defence.

These five decades, since Israel fought Its war for 'living-space', I've watched the dream go sour and thought Their talk of 'by God's grace' The sort of thing routinely taught When people make a case For causes desperately short Of any moral base.

And now we've evidence, if more Was needed, in the way That Bibi's happy to ignore The bulging dossier With Trump's additions to the store Of handy ways to play The fascist card and give his core Supporters a field-day.

For now I have to count the name Of 'Israel' one we lump, To its and my eternal shame, With that of Donald Trump, An anti-semite who would blame 'The Jews' as soon as plump For Moslems or whoever came In next for the high jump.

And then I think: was Sartre right To say that what we mean By 'Jew', or ought to mean in light Of history, is seen Most clearly in the victim-plight Of everyone who's been Killed, dispossessed, or put to flight By hatred's lie-machine.

So 'anti-semite' would extend Beyond its usual scope To take in haters who depend On 'Jews' to let them cope With categories of foe and friend So stark that they must grope Around for scapegoats fit to lend Their hate-crusade new hope.

For who, I ask you, wants or dares To come straight out and state The chosen-people case: that there's Some type-specific trait, Of grace or shame, that no-one shares Who's not a candidate For marking down as one of theirs Or one they're bound to hate?

So I’m among the dispossessed, An inner exile, though I've only lost the dream that blessed My early years, and so Am now resolved to do my best For those who undergo Such pains as only the oppressed In soul and body know.

Why then should I, deprived of all I once believed in, keep Faith with a state whose actions call For me to take the leap And say I’ve now crossed Bibi’s wall With soul-wounds that go deep Because such late-life Paul-to-Saul Conversions don't come cheap.

Yes, I'm still 'Jewish', but the word Now signifies, for me, Whatever voices can't be heard, Whoever lives unfree, And those whose minds and hearts are stirred By acts we daily see When history’s victims, undeterred By force, seek liberty.

So when they couple 'Zionist' With (what seems quite insane) 'Anti-semitic' I insist That first we ascertain Just what they mean in case we've missed Their point and it's the strain Induced by that mind-wrenching twist Of thought that's most germane.

All praise to those Israelis brave Enough to stay around, Confront the threats, and fight to save The name in which they found, Like me, a source of pride that gave Fresh hope yet runs aground More jarringly with each new wave Of war-planes Gaza-bound.

For now the hate-name 'Arab' rings, On every settler's tongue, With a harsh resonance that brings Back memories fresh sprung, Like 'Jew', said brusquely, which still stings Me now as once it stung Years back, and other hurtful things They'd say when I was young.

And, worse, we have to quell our rage When Trump and Bibi use Our history of victimage As a means to excuse Their choice of some new war to wage, Which makes it seem us Jews Are cast forever as front-page And soul-destroying news.

Yet most of all it's this that drives Me nearly to despair: The thought that Palestinian lives Should be the ones that bear The lethal cost of what arrives Like karma when we dare To reenact a scene that thrives On sufferings elsewhere.

Yet that's the hideous double-bind They'd wish on us, those two Gut-populists who’ve now combined Their forces with a view To ‘common interests’ redefined So as to let them do Whatever gets the mob behind Their demagogic coup.

So if we’re so keen to appease Our ‘ally' Trump, then how Come he and his own allies seize Each chance to re-avow Those sentiments that show that he's, Like them, one who'd allow A pogrom-blitz if that would please His followers right now.

So – pray forgive me if I rub The lesson in too hard – What price our entry to the club Of players with Trump card If, from now on, we have to grub Around for such ill-starred Alliances as earn a snub Even in our backyard?

Why then rebuke me when I stake My faith on it that we've A duty now, as Jews, to take Our conscientious leave Of any creed that, for the sake Of striving to achieve The New Jerusalem, would make Us prone to self-deceive.

For there's no telling just how far This grim charade might run Before it hits a credence-bar When we'll at last have done With any rule that says we are Required to honour none But tales of faith that may now jar No matter how they're spun.

You find me now, I must confess, A man of darker mood And one perhaps too keen to stress These things on which I brood Incessantly, though hoping less For some new certitude Than for some way to dispossess Myself of hopes renewed.

It's when I think again of that Embrace so warmly shared Between the fascist plutocrat And Bibi, aptly paired As they may be, that I feel flat- Out thankful to be spared All last pretence of aiming at The moral circle squared.

For who could make-believe the dream Lives on now Israel's made Its Faustian pact with Trump's regime And bolstered the parade Of those whose latest master-scheme, Once all the plans are laid, Leaves no place on the winning team For their back-up brigade?

Some certainly recognized the suffering of the migrants concerned, but comments beneath a Daily Mail article included the following: ‘Isn’t it about time these people stayed to sort out the mess in their own countries instead of running away?’; and ‘Hard as it may seem, the only solution is to send all of them (without exception) back to the port where they came from’ . . . . These are not the comments of people simply too absorbed in their own lives to dwell on the suffering of distant people. They express an active resistance against the ethical claim that these migrants’ suffering might make upon the authors.- Julia O’Connell Davidson, ‘Migration, Suffering and Rights’

We've travelled many seas, my love,We've travelled many lands,For when you're refugees, my love,There's no-one understands;Sometimes I think the Lord aboveJust wants us off his hands.

Shall we not rest awhile, my dear,Shall we not stop to rest?I weaken mile by mile, my dear,And still we travel West,And still those looks that say: you're hereAn uninvited guest.

Don't take it so to heart, my sweet,Don't let it cloud your days.If those dark looks should start, my sweet,Don't mind their curious ways,And should they curse when they should greetThink naught of such displays.

Note: This piece is an updated reprise of Edgell Rickword’s mid-1930s poem ‘To the Wife of Any Non-Interventionist Statesman’. Rickword was addressing those mainly Conservative politicians who opposed sending military aid to the Republican Government in Spain on grounds of Britain’s supposed ‘neutrality’ in keeping with the policy of other European powers. This was in flagrant disregard of the fact that Germany and Italy were providing large amounts of logistical support to the rebel (Francoist or Fascist) side.

So. Cut to Yemen, 2017.......

Bad form, I know, intruding thus on yourMost intimate proceedings at a time,Of all times, when you'd wish to shut the doorOn such intrusions, let alone what I'mProposing here. Just let me say, beforeYou cut short this rude visitant mid-rhyme,That though it's something most folk might deplore,And some would count a veritable crime,Still certain faults may merit rather moreBy way of censure, and - if my words chimeWith your assessment - urge you to ignoreYour husband's overtures. So, should he climb

Into the marriage-bed and indicateThat maybe you'd now like to have a goFor old time's sake, so he can demonstrateHis undiminished powers, please let him know It's just not on and that he'll have to waitTill you've delivered him a blow-by-blowAccount of why you're dead set to frustrateThis new-found fervent craving to bestowHis favours nearer home. Affairs of stateAre more the sort of stuff you'll want to throwAt him than those affairs that hardly rateBrief mention in the gossip-pages. SoLet me, your voice of conscience, intimateSome counter-thoughts to interrupt the flowOf pillow-talk that then begins to grateUntil you give that dolt the old heave-ho.

Past forty people tend to have the faceThat they deserve, as Auden said - a bitUnfair to some, perhaps, but just the place To start in figuring how you'd better quitHis soon detested marital embraceAs the truth dawns. For it's a phizog fitFor detailed study should one wish to traceThe path by which this liar, hypocriteAnd bully-boy outlived each new disgrace,Each proven lie or piece of pure bullshitExposed, and, after letting in some spaceOf time - alms for oblivion - strove to hitThe headlines once again. He'd join the raceAs if from a fresh start, and so omitTo mention how he'd made a basket-caseOf every job for lack of mother-wit

Or through an ego whose enormous sizeAnd utter lack of scruple left it proneTo all variety of tricks and lies,The sort of thing he'd never quite outgrownSince Oxford. They're presented in the guise(As you'll best know) of one just lately flownThat second nest and not yet worldly-wiseThough quick enough, when his thin cover's blown,To play the Bullingdon and exerciseThe toff's old privilege of uttering bone-Head platitudes that win the booby-prizeExcept as judged by members of his ownSelect bunch with their Oxford-nurtured tiesOf influence, patronage, and social tone.They made sure he could never jeopardiseHis chances through excess testosterone,

Stupidity, or (now you'll see just whereI'm coming from) his willingness to sellThis country down the river, bring despairTo countless migrant lives, make each day hell-On-earth for starving Yemenis since they'reIn line of fire for every British shellRained on them by the Saudis, do his share,And more, in building up the current swellOf fear-fed xenophobia, and prepareThe witches' brew of lies that cast its spellOn those without the time or thought to spareFor checking things. That's why they promptly fellFor every false prospectus he'd declareWith all the chutzpah of the ne'er-do-wellStreet-trader trying to flog a dodgy pairOf Levis to a cash-strapped clientele.

So when he next lets on he's keen to getBack on connubial terms, or starts to pressThe chat beyond a spot of tete-a-tete,Please think - before allowing him to messWith your sleep-patterns - how it might be met,This fumbling boss-shot at a first caress,By firm repudiation of your debtTo nature, custom or the old-style stressOn wifely duty. Then - to make him sweat - Recount his sundry acts of boorishness,Hypocrisy, self-interest, covert threat,Bad faith, and willingness to acquiesceIn proven war-crimes. No cause for regret:Think Lysistrata, watch him detumesce,Then hit him with your choicest epithetAs he finds cause to rue his state of dress.

This verse-letter is written in Rhyme Royal, the seven-line stanza-form (rhyming ababbcc) that goes back to some of the earliest English poetry and was taken up by W.H. Auden in his ‘Letter to Lord Byron’. The piece first appeared in Letters from Iceland (1937), a jointly-authored book by Auden and Louis MacNeice containing a mixture of verse and prose, travel-notes and politics, the serious and the anecdotal or skittish. My poem is addressed to Auden and talks about our current world-political scene in relation to likewise ominous developments during the 1930s. It emulates Auden’s way of mixing the formal with the casual and his knack of moving out, cinematic-style, from the personal or parochial to the global or world-historical.

(‘MacSpaunday’: collective name invented by Roy Campbell for the group of prominent left-leaning 1930s writers [mostly poets] which included Auden, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis. Campbell was a right-wing poet and polemicist who meant nothing very kindly or affectionate by it. A quick Google search will help with ‘Chad Valley’ and other perhaps unfamiliar references.)

Forgive, dear Wystan, my presuming thus To pinch your rhyme-scheme, though you can affordTo humour me or not make too much fuss Since you first lifted it from Byron (Lord) And took some other tricks of his on board(Which I'll do here), like using verse to chat,As mood suggests, concerning this and that.

Still, let’s admit the parallels extend Beyond such formal matters to the factThat you, back in the 1930s, penned Those stanzas full of doubts and fears, though tact As well as your un-Faustian poet-pactWith sage Apollo, god of form, requiredThat verse-craft quell what panic-state inspired.

You won’t believe it but, just eighty years On from your time of writing, we’ve now gotA US president who brings those fears Of yours right back to life and shows we’d not Yet managed to dig out the fascist rotYou saw as enemy to all that stood For civic virtue and the common good.

You keep it up, that semi-jester role Encouraged by the verse-form, but it’s hardTo keep up now, in part because a droll Or laid-back style’s the standard calling-card Of satire’s current leftist avant-garde,And partly owing to the thought that it’sQuite likely he’ll soon blow us all to bits.

You don’t yet know it, writing from your own Mid-thirties standpoint, but they’ll fight and winThe war they strive by all means to postpone, Those old appeasers whose pro-Hitler spin On world affairs our Tory toffs beginTo try once more, kowtowing to a fool-Cum-gangster bred up in the self-same school.

You see them now, hot-footing it to pay Their fawning overtures as soon as he’sInstalled as president, though really they Just want to front the quisling queue and seize This lucky chance to get down on their knees,Kiss arse if needed, and declare that he’ll Have their loyal backing after that trade-deal.

One thing the verse-form helps with, as you know, Is how to handle the eight-decade lapseWhich gives us knowledge of the way things go Post-'39 while your temporal maps Have lots of ‘here be dragons’ blanks and gapsWhich we can now fill in with all the late-Won wisdom brought by simple change of date.

This form’s a winner chiefly through its use Of that capacious rhyme-scheme, plus the wayIts mix of formal structure with some loose Or casual phrasing lets us have our say About how you lot might have saved the dayBut not risk sounding smug or acting wiseAfter events that matched your worst surmise.

Besides, what price the dubious benefit Of our historic wisdom if we takeFrom it no more than an excuse to sit Around composing verses, or to make Your low decade our theme just for the sakeOf cranking out more poems that allowUs more escape-routes from the here-and-now.

So not for us to tax that ’thirties crew Of poet fellow-travellers with the crime,If such it is, of having much to do With ideas, words and clever turns of rhyme But not with urgencies of place and timeThat, so we judge, should properly demandThey exit poetry’s cloud-cuckoo-land.

That's why I’m not the least degree inclined To join the Orwell-clones who now deploreYou and your generation, or who find Self-love and self-advertisement, no more, In those formalities devised to shoreAgainst your sense of a world-order goneTo pot: let good verse-manners carry on!

Yet getting old MacSpaunday off the hook Is too much like extending special leaveTo us, or promising to close the book On our inaction just so long as we’ve Made good our case for history’s reprieveOn grounds of service to the poet’s artIn homage to its formal world apart.

For – truth to tell – we now have far less scope Than you for any self-defensive moveWhich says that poetry’s our last, best hope, That its constraints may help us jump the groove Of prose-constricted habit, and so proveNot just an action-blocking trick of thoughtBut one that brings bad action-plans up short.

The point is, we’ve your own example there In front of us, your poems and the wholeMind-set we call ‘The Thirties’, so you bear The burden of our thinking how you might Have done much more to carry forward the fightFrom literary speech-act to the sphereOf action where the world may lend an ear.

So, like I said, we’re all the more to blame For blaming you yet failing still to learnThe lesson that you ‘thirties poets came, In different ways, to mark as your great turn Of life and thought, so that you’d either spurnMuch of your early work or make it knownThat we should deem it kid’s stuff, long outgrown.

Not so, at least not always, so why strain Credulity by asking us to twistOur judgement round and treat your poem ‘Spain’, That conscience-call, as if we’d somehow missed Its glaring faults because they offered gristTo Orwell's tetchy mill and also fedYour taste for giving self-reproach its head.

Always a flip-side, and for us it’s that Temptation to indulge our own retreatFrom deed to word or act to poem-chat By totting up your moral balance-sheet And fancying our tame versicles to meetThe kinds of standard you applied, not justLate on but when your muse was more robust.

In short, no jacking up our feeble score As activists or militants by dintOf self-applied analogy with your Half-century sustained poetic stint And, more than that, your having left in printSo many poems that (late qualms aside)Took politics and ethics well in stride.

Suppose our situations were reversed, You looking back across the eight-decade-Long interval and witnessing the worst Of times again, what with this bottom-grade Moronic US president who’s madeIt clear he’ll kill all life on Earth through oneMeans or another by the time he’s done.

Just think (the implications won’t be lost On you) how it’s within the power of thisIlliterate thug to start a war whose cost, Should just a few ICBMs not miss Their target, adds up to the thought-abyssOf humankind extinct along with allThe arts and sciences on the small ball.

God knows, you had it bad back then, but think: What shall they say of us who had the chanceTo put a stop to him, that missing link In modern guise, yet chose to look askance At action-plans and cultivate a trance-Like will to have no distant rumours spoilOur peace with echoes of that mortal coil.

You’ve heard me out, and patiently, so I’ll Not try your patience too far but remark,For what it’s worth, that elements of ‘style’ (So-called) in your best poems strike a spark Of shared humanity against the darkAnd all-destructive potency that waitsOn one man's word as will or whim dictates.

My point: you had the hint of gravitas, The serious note, as in an end-of-termSchool homily by one who might just pass As Head-material, that it took to firm Your satire up and make the guilty squirm,Along with just the light touch to disarmOur finely tuned self-righteousness alarm.

For, unlike some, you managed to hold out Against the idea that satiric scorn,Or saeva indignatio, had clout Enough by fear of mockery to warn The wicked off their ways so that, twice-bornAt its dread summons, they confessed in fullHow far they’d yielded to temptation’s pull.

Just think of Peter Cook (I know, he showed Up decades later – Pete-and-Dud sketch guy),And how he talked about the debt he owed, As satirist, not just to Private Eye But to those Berlin cabarets whose wryTake on the 1930s did so muchTo save the world from war and Hitler’s clutch.

No, satire’s not enough to show the likes Of Trump in their true colours, or arouseSuch popular revulsion that he strikes Them suddenly as just a big girl’s blouse (Nice phrase – you’ll like it) and the people’s vowsGo up: God help us if we don’t get rid Of this buffoon and mend the harm he did.

Allow me just one last attempt to nail Down what I mean, although perhaps the driftIs fairly clear: that poetry must fail In times like yours and mine because the gift Of words-in-order’s not a thing to liftThe curse of evil government or fillWrong-doers with a cautionary chill.

The formalist in you said poems had No power to ‘make things happen’, since their placeWas ‘in the valley of their making’ – Chad Valley, or so it seems – and lacked the space For anything so brute or in-your-faceAs politics, or palpable intent,Or speech-acts of a world-transforming bent.

But that was you late on, when you’d long switched Allegiances from Marx and Freud to GodWith Freud as handy back-up, and so ditched All thought of poetry as lightning rod Or galvanizer for the ’thirties squadWho had no time for any such divorceBetween the conjoint claims of form and force.

If you were sitting now in that ‘low dive On 52nd Street’ and read a pageOr two of our news coverage, you’d arrive At much the same conclusion: not an age For private threnodies rehearsed offstageBut one that leaves the poets, now as then,Lone formalists against the anchormen.

News

Culture Matters is pleased to announce that the third Bread and Roses Poetry Award, sponsored by Unite, is now open for entries. As in previous years, there will be 5 prizes of £100 for the best poems, and an anthology of the poems of around a further 20 entrants will be published later in the year. In addition, we are offering a mentoring and support package for writers who have not yet published a collection. Up to 3 of these entrants - who may or may not have won one of the 5 prizes - will be linked to an experienced, published poet, and they will be helped to produce their first published collection. They will also be invited, along with the winners of the 5 prizes, to launch their collections at the Teeside International Poetry Festival, to be held in Middlesbrough in April 2020. See article in the Poetry section for the full rules and guidelines.

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The arts are just a part of the weapons of life. Art can make us see and feel reality and help change that reality. Art is revelation. Art is hard work. Art is part of protest.

Jayne Cortez

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

The most precious thing in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth.

Rosa Luxemburg
Letters from Prison

The individual will reach full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken. This will be translated concretely into the reconquering of one's true nature through liberated labor, and the expression of one's own human condition through culture and art,